May 10, 2000  A U.S. research ship and a British Royal Air Force C-130 photographed an iceberg about the size of Rhode Island that's drifted in the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica isince August 1999, prompting the U.S. National Ice Center to issue an alert to shipping.

View of the large iceberg in the Drake Passage from a British Royal Air Force C-130.

Falklands Met Office

The berg broke up and melted in February 2000 with no reports of ships hitting it.

Cheryl Bertoia of the U.S. National Ice Center in Suitland, Md., said the iceberg was about 43 miles long and 16 miles wide when the alert was issued.

The ship and airplane reported that it's from about 100 to 200 feet high. A trail of "thousands of little bergs are in the water with it," Bertoia says. "They range in size from as big as a house to as big as a grand piano." They stretch about 100 miles from the large iceberg. In early October it was moving toward the east at about 10 miles a day in the ocean current that circles Antarctica.

Those aboard the Royal Air Force plane said two very large crevasses were seen along the length of the iceberg as well as numerous other places where relatively small bits were ready to detach. It is anticipated calving will also occur along the large crevasses. They also saw numerous caves, some of which looked vast in themselves, around its periphery, had formed. Above some of the caves long crevasses had formed. No wildlife, such as penguins, was seen.

The ship that photographed the iceberg was the Laurence M. Gould, which was on its way to the U.S. Antarctic Program Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula. The airplane was from the Falkland Islands.